'Dumb Terminals' Can Be a Smart Move for Companies

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "More companies are forgoing desktop and laptop computers for dumb terminals — reversing a trend toward powerful individual machines that has been in motion for two decades, the Wall Street Journal reports. 'Because the terminals have no moving parts such as fans or hard drives that can break, the machines typically require less maintenance and last longer than PCs. Mark Margevicius, an analyst at research firm Gartner Inc., estimates companies can save 10% to 40% in computer-management costs when switching to terminals from desktops. In addition, the basic terminals appear to offer improved security. Because the systems are designed to keep data on a server, sensitive information isn't lost if a terminal gets lost, stolen or damaged. And if security programs or other applications need to be updated, the new software is installed on only the central servers, rather than on all the individual PCs scattered throughout a network.'"

Comments

How many times have we heard this before?

[elrous0]

I swear I've heard this "companies migrating to dumb terminals" prediction about 100 times since the early 90's. And, in all that time, I've yet to personally see a company actually doing it. I'm beginning to think some dumb terminal or server company periodically plants these articles or something.

About the closest thing I've seen to this is a few companies I've worked for who ran certain applications (like Office) on a central server. But even that has become passe I think (in fact, the agency I work for recently abandoned that model due to server strain and just started installing the apps on individual computers).

Does anyone here actually work for a company that currently (or ever has) used true dumb terminals?

-Eric

Re:Not good for large installations.

[AKAImBatman]

Sounds like it would introduce a single point of failure.

It works both ways. A single point of failure becomes a single point of security. So it's a lot easier to make sure that everyone has the latest patches, and that the system is fully locked down. Besides, you rarely have only one server. You usually have a cluster of servers providing service to the users with the home directories on the network. If one goes bad, you can take it down and do maintenence on it while the users who were using it just log into a different server.

The truth is that there are very few business units that actually need their own desktop machines. The problem is that we developers are some of the few who actually need workstations, meaning that we often fail to push the best solution for the company as a whole. :)

I've been working at a thin client site for a bit.

[kahei]

I've been working at a site that went to a thin client solution back the last time that was fashionable (so there's been some time for it to settle down). They've saved some I.T. costs but it's at considerable cost in functionality -- application responsiveness is OK for light Office and web use but terribly slow for heavy-duty Excel users, the network is studded with PCs installed for people who just had to have some bit of software or just had to run things fast, network bandwidth is a constant problem and there's also a strange issue whereby users connect to the BigSystem server to run BigSystem, and to the BiggerSystem server to run BiggerSystem, and are surprised when they can't use the same paths, settings, clipboard etc on both.

I think they could have achieved the same effect by just scaling back IT in the usual way -- cutting staff, sticking with older computers, fixing only the most critical problems. I'm not saying the thin client system hasn't worked, because this organization isn't computer-focused and doesn't generally demand much from its computer systems. But it certainly makes me doubt whether the idea would work well in a demanding, information-driven business.

Missed the point

[plopez]

FTA:
Because the terminals have no moving parts such as fans or hard drives that can break, the machines typically require less maintenance and last longer than PCs. Mark Margevicius, an analyst at research firm Gartner Inc., estimates companies can save 10% to 40% in computer-management costs when switching to terminals from desktops

The TCO is not in hardware, but in software and support. What makes a PC network so horrendously expensive (Gartner estimated 4K to 10K USD per seat per year at one time) is the army of technicians required to keep them running. Dumb boxes allow centralization of support which is much less expensive. So you spend less on hardware and labor, and use some of those savings for a really, highspeed network and a really reliable server cluster.

BTW, now-a-days this is often pronounced 'Citrix' or 'Remote Desktop'. Same basic principle.

Re:Not good for large installations.

[pipatron]

One biggy is that with MS Terminal server there is no saving on licensing (i.e just because you are running terminal server doesn't automatically mean that you could move to a concurrent licensing model) Plus to make it work really well you need to invest in third party products to suppliment Microsoft Terminal server.

You could also move to an operating system built from the ground with this kind of usage in mind, for example Linux. Then you can stop worry about licensing too.